peace in our time
Today’s nuclear situation could be simply described as two ‘daddy-fixated’ idiots with their fingers on the triggers. You don’t need me to go over the ‘fire & fury’ scenario and each launch, counter-strike and military operation is well documented elsewhere but what I do think is worthwhile is to have a sneaky peak into the ‘Kim’ and distant past and revisit some of the historic events, together with the politic that have led us to where we are today. I fully concede it’s a bit dry but it does provide a necessary backdrop and appreciation to what is probably the most dangerous and unpredictable time in our history since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was founded by Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Un’s grandfather, in 1948 and represented the Soviet-occupied northern half of Korea. From the onset the nation was not wholly communist but adopted an amalgam of socialism, nationalism and isolationism, where the Kim family assumed the semi-God-like position of saviours of the nation. Its ‘songbun’ class system divides the population into the three broad sections of ‘core’, ‘wavering’ and ‘hostile’ and you don’t want to find yourself in the latter as you’re likely to wake-up as one of the estimated 200,000 in brutal forced labour camps.
The Kim dynasty has been following a nuclear weapons programme since 1953 and it has long been the centrepiece of the nation’s identity. As a nationalistic unifying call to arms it has proved invaluable to the regime, which see it as necessary to rebuff the aggressive intentions of, specifically, the imperialist US and its allies Japan and South Korea. The belief in Pyongyang is that the US attacked Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq because they did not possess a nuclear capability, and hence, that it’s essential for them to develop one to remain unmolested.
Knowing this to be the case, the US (under President Clinton) did, by all accounts, seriously contemplate the military option of destroying North Korea’s weapons in 1994 but decided against this when it was calculated that as many as a million people worldwide would be killed, including tens of thousands of US servicemen based in South Korea. Subsequently, all US administrations have flip-flopped between brokered deals on aid & oil, and restrictive sanctions, a policy described as ‘strategic patience’ and one that has now been openly replaced by the Trump team with one that has ‘all options on the table’. With US sanctions already at their perceived maximum level, the key player in the whole scenario is nuclear-ready China. Undoubtedly, only China could bring North Korea to heel. Though its’ patience is often tested, China remains the country’s only trading partner of note, supplying food and oil and finance, and as such, it holds the balance of power.
The major perceived difference between Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il and the current leader, Kim Jong Un, is the level of unpredictability. The same has been said of Big Don but that wouldn’t be the case as history shows us George W was equally hot-headed. However, it is thought unlikely that Kim will act pre-emptively as his primary (rational?) goal is regime survival, but stranger things have happened! The best I think we can hope for is that the US decides the world has to live with a nuclear North Korea, as it does with a nuclear Pakistan, Iran & Israel. In a standoff worryingly reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick’s Doctor Strangelove, the current discussion of the US potentially flying a Tomahawk cruise missile directly over Pyongyang appears a gesture too far…
